Miserlou
by twentyfiveraven
Summary: Mello and Matt just trying to get by, make an honest living...as hitmen. Heavy Pulp Fiction influence, but not a crossover. AU Graphic violence, MelloxMatt, implied other pairings later on.
1. Retirement

**Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note or Pulp Fiction**

MISERLOU

_"You see, this profession is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't."_

--_Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), Pulp Fiction _

It was an old tradition among the family members for the fathers to bring their oldest sons along with them on the day they retired. That was how they first met, opposite each other on the inside pocket of the pleather booth on the west side of the diner, blurry doppelgangers of themselves on the thick glass window, like quiet ghosts of truth making mockery of the whole thing.

Matt remembered his father's shoulders the best; blocky and wide, and how when he was even younger he used to hook his knees around them and hold his arms out like plane wings, pretending he was a lookout on a crow's nest, his father's torso the mast, his medium strides toward the target creating ocean waves that bobbed him up and down like a buoy.

And he remembered the watch. It was an ugly watch, scratched and burnished brass, and the strap could easily loop twice around the circumference of Matt's wrist. Matt knew because he'd tried it on while his father was off putting bullets in other people's brains.

(Always the brain, Matt, he would say, clapping Matt lightly on the shoulder, because you can never be sure when you aim for the heart.)

Yeah, Matt had tried it on; the cool metal resting between the juncture of his hand and wrist, heavy with the weight of manhood, and Matt had felt very solemn.

Of course, what he remembered the most was that fucking brat across from him.

Matt had forgotten his name, even though his father said it was important. He had a mop of violently yellow hair, a stark contrast to the white of his cruelly sharp face. He was restless, this kid, and Matt watched him sway haltingly on the edges of his vision, which was concentrated on a certain spherical pink juggernaut inside his GameBoy. He kept kicking him incessantly, most likely out of sheer boredom, a barrage of hard young feet against his shins, until Matt got sick of it and brought his knees up underneath his chin. It was obvious the kid was an attention whore, and Matt just wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledgment.

There was a lull, where all Matt was conscious of was the low murmur of his father's voice, the even lower, slightly accented tone of the target, and his videogame, until he heard the distinct sound of glass sliding against formica.

He looked up, and there was that _kid_, that kid who had the audacity to drag Matt's chocolate milkshake over to _his_ side of the table. _He wouldn't though_, but as soon as the thought flashed through his mind, Matt knew, just looking at this kid, that he would, and he _did_, right in front of him. He looked right at him, right in his eyes, and took a long deep gulp of his milkshake. He didn't even have the decency to get himself another straw; he used _Matt's_, and that just made his skin crawl. He felt violated just watching him, his long finger clutched possessively around the cold glass, the beads of condensation like the sweat of a hostage forced into compliance.

Matt narrowed his eyes at this arrogant little _prick_ that was taking long, gratifying sips of his milkshake. Matt loved chocolate, it was his favorite, and he had always tugged wordlessly on the pucker of fabric by the elbow of his father's sleeve, eyes wide and longing at the bright, lustrous sheen of the chocolate bar wrappers while they stood in line at checkout.

He never did notice, though, his father. Either that, or he misunderstood Matt's yearning for impatience. He was always misconstruing Matt with his idea of was Matt should be. It seemed he was good at reading everyone else but his own son.

That little cock-monger was smiling now, his mouth a thin crooked line, stretched out ugly and smug around Matt's straw, and Matt had never been so angry in his young life.

There was a flash of light across the other boy's face, and then another a glaring play of white right in his stupid pointed face, making him blink in puzzled discomfort, the straw falling back into the drink when he winced.

Matt's father had adjusted his watch, (the signal) and Matt had felt a spike of pride for the watch, with its complicated, noble history. It was an heirloom that had been in their family history for generations upon generations, a good luck charm that had earned his father's liking (not like his son). He very rarely took it off, and kindly informed Matt, on a regular basis ever since he'd been born, that one day it would be his to pass on to his own firstborn son. Then he'd ruffle Matt's hair (which he hated) and bestow upon him a rare half-smile (which he loved).

Matt looked at the watch, grateful and affectionate, and then the next moment the world burst into red with a bang and the face of the watch was completely obscured with his father's blood.

Matt didn't remember what he thought, or felt, or even heard, immediately after his father's wise head had been shot off. He did remember, though, the sight of blood splattered all the way across the empty seat of the booth, dyeing the hard green pleather brown-red, and how his chocolate milkshake spilled sideways and combined with the flecks of blood and gore, flooding the white table all over with a thick chocolate swamp.

He did remember, once his ears had stopped ringing, the patrons of the diner's screams fading into the background while they fled.

And something slick, sickeningly warm, coursing it's way down his face, his neck, into his clothes, into his skin, where it would never wash out.

He remembered the kid, trying to stay as still as possible, his face covered in bloody freckles like some horrible skin disease.

"Dad says to tell you we'll meet again some day."

He brushed his yellow hair away from his face, staining it orange and smearing the blood into streaks along his temple.

"The two of us, obviously."

Matt didn't remember what he felt then, covered in hot blood.

"And I need that."

He had nodded toward his father's wrist.

And Matt remembered the feel of his father's dead hand beneath his own, still hot, wet with blood, how easily the skin moved. At the time he hadn't been able to speak the words, but he knew the message shone brilliantly out of his eyes, it was that strong; This watch is mine, it's my birthright, my father promised it would be mine one day, so now it is, and it will stay mine. It will always be mine, and father always s-said that trophy-takers like your own pathetic father were scum, and you're just as scummy as he is, and if you want this watch you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands, you little brat.

The kid just spat on the floor, shrugging, and turned away. Matt didn't remember what happened afterwards.

Though he never did feel the same way about chocolate.

* * *

**A/N: **So I feel I owe everyone an explanation...OO

I was listening to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack and had this warped, psychedelic dream incorporating Death Note with Pulp Fiction and it was just so twisted and so AWESOME that it inspired me to write this.

Now _**this is in no way a crossover**_ between Pulp Fiction and Death Note. Though there are definitely movie references/similar plot points (such as the watch)/soundtrack references (Miserlou is the name of the song that plays during the opening credits of Pulp Fiction). But there will be no Jules, no Vincent, no Butch, got it? Lovely.

((Oh and quotes, of course, because Pulp Fiction quotes are iconic.))

Ahem, yeah. :

Also, this first chapter is really, **really** different from the ones to come. This is really long, wordy, and descriptive, more my usual style of writing. All the other chapters are extremely vague and fast-paced, which is a writing style I've always wanted to try, and it suits the whole overall tone much better.

Comments make me ridiculously happy, and happiness is a warm gun, and as it is Americans' right to bear arms I'm about to take my warm gun and go find me a grizzly--provided there are comments to go on, yes, of course.


	2. Red

**Chapter Two - Red**

Friday night, nine forty-two P.M., and the signal color was red, and Matt had dressed accordingly in lime green (you know, first impressions and all that). He always thought that bit of protocol was ridiculous, how targets and assassins, or assassins and assassins, sometimes, were so impeccably coordinated. His own father's retirement had involved a preacher's collar. Matt had thought it was unbelievably cool, back when he was a young idiot. Now that he was older, five years, two months, and sixteen days older, he just considered it really melodramatic.

The signal color was red, and Matt had strategically sweet-talked his way into the corner booth, where only the person who looked in for it would notice his flaring scarlet head.

One distant motorcycle engine, two ringing doorbells, and twelve footsteps later, and why was Matt not surprised.

_He_ was, although he did a good job of hiding it; Matt thought, Matt saw the widening of his seraphim eyes and he just _gloated_.

"You're taking this better—"

Matt noticed in a detached way how magnificently his cherry red Doc Martens clashed with the rest of his tight black.

"—than I thought you would have, Matt."

"That's _my_ water, Mello. This one's yours."

Matt barely kept the tension out of his voice. Damn this _brat._

"My bad," but he grinned, that stupid grin which had reached unruly levels of devastation, like an un-held automatic weapon, as Mello had gotten older.

They were silent, Matt starting to seethe for no good reason and Mello's grin widening, his pointed chin balanced precariously in his leather palm, until the waitress bustled over to take their orders. Matt wasn't hungry; Mello wanted devil's food cake (which was, to Matt's horror, some kind of ungodly layered chocolate confection covered in chocolate with chocolate covered strawberries and automatically sent its consumer into a chocolate induced coma).

"I'm surprised you picked this place."

He was sliding the saltshaker back and forth between his hands, still restless, and his hair hadn't changed either, funny how he was still a ten year old at fifteen.

"Considering."

He nodded imperceptibly toward the line of glass sided booths behind him, one of which (Matt knew, even thought he couldn't see it) boasted relatively new upholstery.

Matt's hand twitched inside his pocket, snatching at the lining instead of Mello's throat.

"Better than a church."

Matt had heard—who in the family hadn't?—about Mello's dad's _own_ retirement: Mello and his dad on one side of the varnished confession booth, the porcelain mother of a child with prosaic eyes on the other, and no one could miss from that range.

And Matt saw with his own eyes the Christ-less crucifix, strung defiantly across red glass rosary beads.

Matt watched the salt shaker slider over too far over the edge of the table, shattering with a nice musical crash.

Mello, Mello looked almost _approving_, which Matt found pretty damn amusing, bizarrely enough.

Twenty and a half minutes later, Mello's chin, smeared with fudge, was pillowed contentedly on his chest, one hand rested sleepily on the slight balloon of his stomach, and Matt had one eye out from underneath red tinted goggles, watching, and he had never felt so at ease in five years, two months, and sixteen days.

Something about the carnivore Mello was, beast in cherry red Doc Martens, the vicious anomaly of his Elysian eyes in that devil face, like the hole in the epicenter of a dreamcatcher. Something incendiary running under his skin, hot venom and ambrosia; Matt just _felt_ that it would taste good.

He rubbed his eye, hard, and remembered one time, during stealth training, Mello had clapped his hand like a vice around Matt's mouth, hissing and high on adrenaline, holding him still so hard that it hurt and left bruises.

(Near, though, had still found them, and Matt had never witnessed anyone, younger or older, throw a tantrum like Mello had.)

Mello groaned pleasantly and said something, looking into Matt's one visible eye with all that blue and red vigorous compulsion.

It was contagious.

It was addictive.

So, yeah, maybe L knew what he was doing when paired the two of them together as Merchants of Death, numbers 1 and 2. (Or was it 2 and 3?)

Then again, Matt thought, one hand on cool bathroom wall and mouth dragging up and down Mello's fluted throat, Mello's knee nudging his thighs apart. Maybe he didn't.

* * *

**A/N: **I have to go shopping like rn so no cool Author's Notes this time. Tell me what you think! :D

X0X0 Raven


	3. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny

**Pumpkin and Honey Bunny**

The first time Matt considered him and Mello 'partners' had nothing whatsoever to do with a job, or even fucking, which they were both good at in carnal, twisted ways that no fifteen year olds should be. It happened the morning after Mello had first seen Pulp Fiction, which he had never seen, and in Matt's world that was a crime deserving of capital punishment unless immediately rectified. Mello's expression, while the credits rolled, was half 'The Scream' and half post-rollercoaster, and Matt had fallen off the couch laughing his ass off just from sheer delight.

It was getting close to Mello's birthday, and jobs were winding down with the onset of Christmas (or picking up, depending on who L hired you out to).

It was early for most people, but they hadn't gotten any sleep, having had a marathon of Tarantino and Captain Kangaroo up until Mello got so inexplicably frustrated at the latter's extravagant facial hair that he put a bullet right through the television screen.

They were at his diner; Matt considered it, like a little kid's fort.

Mello was ravaging his chocolate chip pancakes, and Matt, after learning of his (friend? comrade? boyfriend? –wince-) addiction, had finally mastered the urge to gag at the smell. He still wouldn't touch the shit though.

Mello speared a strip of Matt's leftover bacon with his fork, narrowing his eyes at it thoughtfully.

"Maybe Samuel L Jackson had a point," and he held the fork aloft like a sword aimed at Matt's throat, and the edge of the table dug painfully into his stomach when Matt leaned forward, but the _obvious_ double take the waitress did was so, so worth it.

Mello just continued drowning his pancakes in syrup, and Matt observed him in bored fascination, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop because now _all _diners were nonsmoking, damn legislative bastards (Public health, bah fucking humbug).

Mello was explaining something, some tangent on logistics or ballistics, Matt couldn't remember exactly, but there was something disgustingly enthralling about the strands of golden syrup stretching from the plate to corner of Mello's mouth, something in the jerking, concentrated flickering of his eyes from Matt's eyes back down to his plate. It made Matt pay attention to all the wrong things. It made him smile, foolhardy and easygoing, in defiance of all his training.

"What do you think?" and Mello chewed on the prongs of his fork, widening his eyes.

Matt, of course, had no idea what the hell he had been talking about. He rubbed looming sleep out of his eyes and rested his chin on delicately folded hands, like a girl.

"I love you, Pumpkin," he said, simpering and batting his eyelashes for good measure, fully expecting Mello to fling the fork at him and drag him out by the ear.

He went lobster death red, but the waitress, passing by again, had literally stopped in her tracks like a scared rabbit, and Mello's grin unsheathed itself like a hunting knife.

It was more than friendship, it was more than fraternity, more than love (because Matt couldn't count how many times he had misunderstood his lovers), it was in the simultaneous wicked lock of their eyes, it was the erasure of all boundaries, the syrupy strands of sinful understanding stretched between them, it was the connection which just made Matt drive faster when Mello was around, or the fact that Mello never missed a single shot when Matt pressed his back against his.

"I love you, Honey Bunny," and Mello hauled him up and over until they crashed together into a million puzzle pieces falling perfectly into place.

The waitress promptly dropped her entire tray of dishes, but of course they'd left by the time she fetched the manager.

And that was it.

They were partners.


	4. Complications

Complications, or How Mello Royally Fucked Everything Up

**Complications, or How Mello Royally Fucked Everything Up**

They had been partners, in every sense of the word, oh yes, for three years before Mello fucked everything up.

The job was supposed to have been easy enough, the classic bait and switch, and Matt was getting a kick out of seeing Mello wearing his clothes, not even bothered by how ludicrously tight Mello's leather was on him, so he was in a damn good mood.

The pre-job sex might have had something to do with it too. And the fact that he'd be eighteen a couple weeks, like Mello, even if he had to stop all the statutory rape jokes.

Blah, blah, blah.

And then Mello got the call, and it must've been either L or Near because he was irreconcilably pissed off for the entire drive there. Matt hated looking back on it, because you weren't supposed to let you partner do _shit _if you had even an _inkling_ they were incapable, and Mello was stretching the hem of Matt's shirt all out of shape and going through chocolate bars like water.

And Matt just let him.

Matt came streaming out, breathing heavy but exhilarated, all ready for him and Mello to speed off thematically into the sunset while exit music soared in the background, only the sun had set already because the whole thing had gone on a lot later than he'd wanted—

Only the driver's seat was empty.

Shit, shit, fucking _shit_—

--Matt could just picture it, Mello with his guns blazing, kicking open the door with Matt's boots still on—

_No_—

The whole world broke apart in fire and noise, smoke and glass and burning heat light and Matt was never ever be able to get the sight out of his mind, the sheer amount of flames licking up the sides of the building, mouth stretched into a hideous gash as he wanted, _prayed_ for inversion, for white to become black, orange to blue, fire to water and death to life but—

There were lots of things that happened that night, things involving smoldering fabric, things involving the white bellies of ambulances, things involving trauma wards and phone calls and goddamn jammed cigarette vending machines.

But Matt always remembered Near across form him in the waiting room (his own partner had been DOA, Near wasn't much affected), action figure in hand, katana balanced across an empty seat.

"The job itself went well, all things considered."

Matt was admiring just _how _much blood he drew with his forefathers' watch over his knuckles, especially since Near had _such_ paper thin skin, when L walked in.

He sat with the three of them in Mello's room, Mello all tubes and horrid machines and closed eyes, and Matt could hardly take it, how weakly his pulse beat beneath his fingertips.

Although the sight of Near with a football for a nose gave him _some_ satisfaction.

L was serious about this, so serious he sent his bodyguards out to hover on the other side of that indefinable fabric curtain. Well, Watari was the bodyguard, even though he basically looked like Jeeves, he could handle a Savage like no one else. No one really knew what Light's purpose was, and the rumor mill churned about him incessantly, and why he was very rarely seen without L.

Matt stared at L, the puppet master behind it all, the head of the family of orphans, and how funny was it that it was L who had sent Mello into that diner in the first place, or even before that, sent Matt's father to literally bite the bullet, back when they had first met, and with all his _fucking _brevity he ripped Matt's life apart. Again.

He didn't blink, talking about complications and for the good of the family, and if Mello was conscious than they both would have emptied their clips into L's candle wax chest. But he wasn't, and since Linda was dead it only made sense Mello would become Near's partner.

Paired with his worst enemy and the son of the woman who had retired Mello's father. Mello was going to be ecstatic when he woke up.

As for Matt, well, as a matter of fact Light's sister Sayu had just finished her training. (Matt remembered her; she'd been in Mello's class, slightly below average, nowhere near the caliber _they _had.) Naturally the two of them would be partnered.

Naturally, it only made sense, but there was something undeniably wrong in their severance, like cutting conjoined siblings off at the interwoven skins of their wrists without bothering to reconstruct, just letting them bleed their hearts out wherever they went.


	5. Birthday

**Birthday**

It was the night before Matt's eighteenth birthday, and him and Mello's last day together. So this meant it was maybe the third worst day of Matt's life. If not the second.

Four weeks ago, or summat, it seemed like a lifetime, already a memory, already a dream, and he'd bounded into Mello's room at dawn, bashing his sleeping form with a pillow. He'd screamed about how _old_ Mello was, propping him up against the headboard and showing Mello (in a series of crudely illustrated dioramas titled How Much Being Eighteen Sucks) all the evils he'd be subjected to, now that he was legal.

Mello had stood up, looking at his hands, feeling his sides and his hair, sort of bemused and frowning.

"I don't feel eighteen," he'd said, unsatisfied but maybe a little relieved.

Matt had all sorts of dreadful things planned for the day, but they only got through half before L suddenly called them away, which was okay because Mello loved darkened basement jobs. They'd jammed all the corpses into a '53 Chevy and set it sailing, flaming and caterwauling off the edge of the shipyard, into the river while they drank up the night in shattered wineglasses and cheered.

Mello had been threatening retribution ever since the day after his birthday, everything from gluing his Wii controllers together to forcing him to wear a dog collar to dragging him to the boardwalk and stuffing him full of cotton candy and corndogs while the Tilt-A-Whirl went around and around and around.

And now, well, Mello had packed up his life in a single bag, refusing Matt's help even though he was pale as death, taped up from hairline to hipbone. And now they were staring despondently at the television, at the walls, at the windows.

Because what could they say, you know? It's like instead of an elephant in the room, they had the remnants of a car crash, a great big blistering wreck of something. Their lives, most likely, cut short like drunken revelry on prom night by metal and inertia.

12:01 A.M.

They looked at each other, finally.

"I don't feel eighteen."

He didn't feel much of anything.

Mello looked at him long after Matt had looked away, probably captivated by the orange-rose glow of his cigarette.

"Got something for ya." He reached underneath the couch, saying something about how he would have wrapped it, but he was kind of busy getting blown up so, yeah, whatever. Matt had said something jauntily disarming, and Mello threw a flimsy cardboard square into his lap.

It was a vinyl, because even though he was a technology _freak_, music was a whole other plane of existence. Pulp Fiction Soundtrack, mint condition.

Oh Damnit.

They leaned against each other like collapsed fence posts, Mello's hand curled against Matt's shoulder, and Matt nearly choked on the medicinal smell of antiseptic and adhesive glue of bandages.

The first random track they tried was sultry enough to make the dry air seem humid, straight instrumental, beach bum bass and soulful sax, and Mello took him outside with the record still playing behind them.

They went to the beach, how they ended up there Matt didn't know, but he knew Mello hated the beach; he was always bitching about the people or the birds or the trash or the sand stuck inside his leather.

Then again, the beach was different at night, rough with high tide, distinctly elemental, earth and water, no gulls in sight, the backdrop of the pier (closed until May) a silent, black, misshapen colossus, like the shadow of a giant's finger.

Matt watched Mello's hair stream out behind him, goggles off so he could see better, because there weren't any lights for, well, Matt would like to say 'miles' but that wasn't true.

It was freezing, and Matt turtled down into the thick fur collar of his vest, looking at the goosebumps erupting along Mello's arms because of course he hadn't brought his coat. Idiot.

"Two tomatoes walking down the street, right? A daddy tomato, little baby boy tomato. Baby tomato starts falling behind, pisses off daddy tomato. Daddy tomato goes over and smooshes him, and says—"

"Parental abuse."

Matt cracked up.

There were little airborne grains of sand getting stuck in the folds of Mello's bandages, and Matt wanted to brush them away so he wouldn't get infected; only it would probably hurt too much if he did.

They spent the night in a stranger's car left in the parking lot, overlooking the horizon, and they stayed awake talking about this job or that job, about remember that time when you thought you lost your watch/you went on Godiva detox/we dressed up like the Mad Hatter and the March Hare for Halloween/we woke up in L's office with no clothes and almost got shot to pieces by Watari/we got drunk on Christmas and held hands, babbling about nothing the entire ride in the ambulance/we graduated a million light years ahead of everyone else/we went to our diner and traumatized that waitress/I stole your milkshake.

Yeah.

He remembered.

The sky turned green, and they moved to the backseat, because this was the absolute last time they could be _they_, and Mello disobeying doctor's orders was practically expected. Matt tried to be careful anyway, of sweat and sand and the foreign feel of gauze underneath his hand.

Dawn came, striped lavender and greenish gold, heavy lidded with clouds, and they were both tired, so very tired, but Matt helped Mello get dressed anyway, because his hellion was too sleepy to protest.

He was sort of drunk, a bit, from lack of sleep, humming Row, Row, Row Your Boat and swaying, kissing Matt all over because he kept missing his mouth.

Matt wasn't any better off, keeping his wrist to Mello's wrist or his temple to Mello's temple or his hip to Mello's hip the entire way home, and it took them ages to get upstairs like that; once they did they fell in the same chair, Matt on the armrest and Mello sitting down, arms coiled around waists, partially extinguished, like candle flames in a bell jar.

When Matt woke up, he was in the chair, and Mello was gone.

* * *

**A/N: **And _there's _the angst monster. -smashes heart-shaped buildings with giant clawed foot of ANGST-

Disclaimer: Don't own Pulp Fiction Soundtrack either! But I don't think it comes in vinyl...anyway...I think I'm overly fond of semi-colons. Hmm.

If this seems a little awkward, like how it fits in to the story as a whole, well, it wasn't even supposed to really _be_ a chapter. It just developed into one and I like how depressing it turned out. Mwahahahaha

As always, feedback is appreciated

X0X0 Raven


	6. Tulip, Part I

**((Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note or Pulp Fiction))**

**((Warnings: Implied MattxSayu, LxLight if you squint, MelloxNear...? O.O))**

**Chapter Six – Two-Lip / Kitten**

Sayu showed up on a Mo(a)nday morning, the one morning it was guaranteed that Matt would have a ridiculous hangover and just Not Be In the Mood. So pardon him if he was on the Booze Cruiser instead of the Welcome Wagon. But Mondays were shit. So his first impression of her was painful and blurry, thinking irritably that she had no right to look so shocked about how shit faced he was when she was his age, and everyone knew she was not so innocent. Except maybe her brother.

Matt didn't know _what_ she thought of him, at first, although once he smoked away his trepidation and adjusted his amber-lensed goggles he was able to convince himself he didn't give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut what she thought.

He found her, that first day, struggling to open the window in the front room, where old paint had stuck it to the frame. Matt watched her face, amused at her cherubic frustration, until she slammed her small fist harshly into the pane and shoved it up with an abrasive squeak.

"Thanks for your help," and she rolled her eyes, big and black with a few scattered shards of syrup inside, like gold coins teasing from the bottom of a well. She tossed her dark, subtle waves of hair and said something as she left, "jerk", or some other soft insult.

Matt just tilted his head and made no move as the window promptly slid shut again.

The first few days they were just sort of randomly there, like two fish swimming in a fishbowl, back and forth, looking at each other out of side eyes with mounting criticism. Yeah, she didn't even try to hide wrinkling her nose or coughing pointedly into her fist whenever Matt walked by with a lit cigarette, and Matt didn't hide his eminent disdain for the J-pop band posters Sayu was wallpapering her room with.

Things came to a head, eventually, and they exchanged a few biting words, going for joints and flanks instead of throats, before—

"So, what's it like, then, having your big brother as L's lapdog?"

She froze, bright feminine animosity suspended in midair, until her mouth turned up a little at the corners and said,

"You mean his bitch."

And Matt laughed, really laughed, smiling, until he realized he hadn't done that since Mello left, and that was enough for him to come, choking, to a sudden stop, and his body rocked with an intense conflicting whirlpool of emotions that threatened to burn out of his eyes until Sayu worriedly pushed a glass of water into his hands.

Matt smoked on the fire escape, and Sayu cooked him breakfast for dinner (out of pity, he knew) and it was chocolate chip pancakes, and Matt relinquished himself to internal purgatory.

He was a masochist that way.

Mello, he knew, would judge Sayu by her choice of weapon. He did that with everyone.

(The first time he openly sneered at Near was when spotted the katana hanging by a loop from his pants; he was so small that the sword practically dragged its tip along the ground.)

Sayu carried a Derringer, vintage style with pretty flower inlays in the handle, effeminate but deadly, and Mello would most likely scoff at first sight, but she was good with it, and she laughed, fey-like, whenever she got a headshot and the blood and brains exploded upwards in a gushing geyser. (Something to do with the trajectory of the bullet, either way Matt could never get it quite right.)

Needless to say, Matt found her charming, like the way he felt about frisky furry things in pet shop windows. She was hopelessly impressionable, and being a guy, he couldn't help exposing her to new things. Matt basically died laughing when he eavesdropped on the huge row she got into with Light after he first smelled ashes on her clothing.

Her skin smelled like ashes too, and everyone in the family knew it.

But beyond the obvious reasons, her winsome smile and onyx orb eyes, she wasn't Mello. She smelled like melon kiwi underneath the smoke, and she said 'oops' whenever she broke something, and even though she adored horror movies, she got queasy just looking at a roller coaster. They were purely friends with benefits. But the thought wasn't as mutual as Matt would like, because sometimes, after, Sayu would murmur sleepily to the sheets and the ceiling, sweet and unsatisfied, sending prickles of guilt and unease up his spine.

She never knew, she wasn't quite good enough to know, that he still went to his diner every week, whittling away his commission buying breakfast for two and watching the plate across from him grow cold, seat empty.

He didn't know exactly why. Remorse, probably, because he was (im)perfectly content watching Sayu paint her toenails perched on the foot of his bed. And Mello had Near, which was the same as having no one.

Well, not quite.

It made the cages of his ribs harden into stone, petrified like in a Gorgon's gaze, whenever he saw Near, Near with his flawless kill record and his spotless white pajamas that always smelled so heavily of bleach. Mello had always hated Near for being better than him, and even though he _said_ he didn't, he'd hated him the moment his dull-eyed mother pulled the trigger. And that hatred hadn't abated a fraction since they became partners. Matt didn't know how Near kept his perfect status; it hadn't been even a full week since he left that Matt began to see the bruises on Near's wrists, then his neck, and the rumors flew thick and fast as a flock of ravens whenever he showed up at the agency with stitches and a shiner, his katana trailing behind him in defeat.

Now Matt didn't care if he was in pain, but Near seemed almost...happy, almost _proud_, and it made him crumble like the ash on the end of his cigarette. Matt caught him at it, once, studying an ugly welt on his forearm, pressing two fingers into the discolored flesh and murmuring to himself with satisfaction.

Mello, Mello wasn't speaking to him. He wasn't speaking to anyone; Matt doubted he even spoke to Near. Or, Near, _especially_. All he saw of Mello, for weeks, months, was a flash of black vinyl, the clinking of fine chains, turning corners so fast Matt never even saw his face. He was lucky just for those glimpses, those glimpses that cracked him deep within, like the striking lament in the wake of a shooting star.

Somewhere between the tattoo on Sayu's shoulder blade and Near's lip reopening when he smirked, Matt just sort of lost it. Him. He didn't know.

They had taken care of some upstart limeys, trying to evoke teddyboys and A Clockwork Orange, and Matt had no idea why L agreed to that job but he knew they pissed _him_ the hell off, so whatever. There was something vindictively sadistic about killing someone his own age. Their eyes always got so big and black and fearful, and Matt remembered Mello's crocodile grin, forcing the victims on their knees, lips pressed to the cold metal of his white gun in a shuddering kiss of sacrament.

They killed themselves every time.

Damn, he wanted those days _back_, somehow, the days of muttering Ezekiel 25:17 back and forth under their breaths, whenever they could catch them between the bullets.

Matt blew smoke out over the alley from the fire escape, slicked over with orange streetlight and silence, and he saw shapes in the smoke, letters and words, in a language so fervent and beautiful it burned to for someone to understand it, and he understood. They spiraled up and blurred together, formless and purple against the sky like Near's bruises, fading, like his memories of Mello's broken, golden laughter.

Sayu called and called, and by the time she balanced her pointy elbows on the windowsill she was crying, because she understood too. She was gorgeous, and derelict, and crying, and Matt remembered when Sayu turned nineteen and he listened to her purr in her sleep, and he first saw, tangibly, the cords of smoke that bound their wrists together, and the choke chain around his neck, warm and strangling, vanishing under the crack beneath the door.

* * *

**A/N**: Wow, I'm SO sorry about the delay. I meant to get this up a week ago, but I've been so easily distracted by school and friends and Bleach RP and that darned rabbit with his pocket watch racing by...anyway.

First of all, I have to thank everyone who reviewed. PROFUSELY. I got most of them at my beta's house, and she will attest to the fact that I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her with lunatic jubilance.

Ezekiel 25:17 is a Pulp Fiction reference--here's the text:

" The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."

And that's from the movie, not the Bible.

Thanks to ALL my readers and reviewers!!

x0x0 Raven


	7. Tulip, Part II

**((Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note or Pulp Fiction))**

**((Warnings: implied MattxHal, so narrowly implied it doesn't deserve a warning, tbqh))**

**Chapter Six, Part II: Tulip Is So Much Better Than Mongoloid**

The family started calling her a waif, which Matt objected to vehemently because Sayu was about as awesome as Mrs. Mia Wallace herself, speedballs included. Either way, Sayu clung to the title dispassionately, turning on the waterworks whenever they were at the agency and Light wasn't around. She pulled off damsel in distress too well; a gaggle of female family members turned up their noses whenever Matt walked by, clucking and ruffling their feathers.

Misa Amane was one of them, blonde and ridiculous and by far the _worst_, but she was just juvenile enough to fall neatly into Sayu's trap. Within days she had extended the hand of partnership to Sayu, and Sayu accepted gladly, and that was another person gone from Matt's life, leaving behind a bottle of melon kiwi perfume and a quivering teardrop on his cheek.

Misa's old partner, Hal, entered quickly to fill her shoes, and the first thing she said to Matt was a heartfelt 'thank you for getting me away from that mangy blonde tramp, whoever you are'.

Matt liked her immediately.

Unlike Amane, she was in on it, to a certain degree, and seemed fine with swapping partners just so long as she never caught sight of Misa's swinging pigtails ever again. Matt won her over with several games of Texas Hold 'Em, Street Fighters and a nice stolen bottle of Merlot.

And his, um, "personality". Ha, ha.

She went out one autumnal morning, and by late summer twilight Near had acquiesced with all his usual graceless grace. He left clinging to the bottom of her jacket like a child to apron strings, only not helpless. It gave Matt the willies.

Midnight, and the diner was open.

No signal colors this time.

* * *

**A/N: **I know what you're thinking. 'What the eff, Raven, why so short?'

a) I wanted to conclude Kitty right where...well, right where I concluded it. -shuffles feet- I dunno, I just thought that the effect wouldn't be the same if I had conjoined both of these chapters into one. There is a definite shift between these two chapters, in terms of Matt's motivation and Sayu's attitude.

b) My beta is going away for a week, and with both our schedules so busy I might not be able to put up Ch. 7 before it's beta'd...and anyway, once she does go away I definitely won't be posting anything new.

-lowers eyes consolingly- There, there, it'll be fine...

And now I have to end my incongruous notes before they're longer than the chapter...

x0x0 Raven


	8. Nepenthe Called Comanche

**(( For Readers Who Have Not Seen Pulp Fiction, A Couple Things:**

**1. In the opening scene, Jules (Samuel L Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) have the infamous dialogue where Vincent tells Jules that a Quarter Pounder With Cheese in France is called a Royale With Cheese.**

**2. Shortly afterward, Jules eats a Big Kahuna burger, and in a close up the cheese looks like it's changed colors.**

**...Just keep reading. This actually has to do with the fic. -.-)) **

**Don't own Death Note or Pulp Fiction...**

**Chapter Seven: Nepenthe Called Comanche/Whatever, He Asked For It**

Mello, unorthodox as ever, hustled in through the kitchen, opened the IN door with such ferocity he nearly brained a busboy, and froze with hackles raised and teeth bared in front of Matt. Who was just barely holding himself still.

Matt pretended to study his menu intently until Mello relaxed.

He still didn't sit down.

Matt still didn't look at him.

"Feel like a burger," he said.

"Big Kahuna?" Mello asked hoarsely, and Matt knew he could die happy.

"Damnit, Mello, you know the cheese changes colors."

"Royale, then?"

"We'd have to go to France."

"I'm up for it."

"Then so am I."

A year, a whole year, six months and four days, a whole fucking lifetime they had lived without really living because the body was the vessel of the soul and Matt had sold his to Mello for the price of an old vinyl record and a chocolate milkshake.

Mello sat down, finally, but they didn't speak, not for a long damn time. But that was okay. They didn't have to yak about bullshit. They could just shut the fuck up for a minute…and comfortably enjoy the silence.

Mello still had his hood up, shadowing nearly all of his face.

"What, you think you're sparin' me something?"

He'd heard the stories, the names: Mello the Two-Faced, Mello the Half-Demon, Mello the Monster.

He wanted to see it for himself.

Mello met his eyes, and something sad and bloodthirsty passed behind them, and Matt remembered for no reason a skinny, solid blonde man in a preacher's collar, talking in distorted words to his father.

He pulled the hood down so unceremoniously it was a ceremony, brushing his hair away from what used to be the left side of his face.

Matt was quiet for a long time, staring, just staring, quietly, but words erupted unbidden from his slightly open mouth.

"_There_ you are."

Mello braced visibly, maybe in an effort not to strangle him, but Matt probably deserved it.

They fought more often now, and not the stupid bickering of married couples (although the amber goggle lenses over black eyes did seem so damn _suburban_) but real fights. Fight the way assassins fought them, brutal and exact in a world where there was no mercy, where _I'm not your precious Sayu_ with _don't confuse me with fucking Near_, don't _look at me like that, don't fucking touch me,_ monster, hollow, ghost, brother, and inevitable teeth, skin, and blood.

But every fist, every contusion, every drop of blood splattering softly into third-grade valentine hearts, was worth it.

And yeah, Matt would be lying to himself if he said this was what he'd wanted. But this was what he got, battle wounds, scars and bruises, bite marks and claw marks and falciform fingernail marks, all those marks carved into the soul that had finally returned to where it belonged, in the azure light of animal eyes that just screamed mine, mine, _mine_.

When the screaming finally stopped, Matt was in a hospital bed, the bite of shrapnel still embedded in his shoulder, L was furious with everyone for switching partners without his permission, the family was in a quiet uproar and Near had tactfully disappeared, Sayu and Light were arguing and Misa was sharpening her manicured claws and Watari was getting too old for this—and Mello was glowing, as much as he could past the skin grafts, because they should've given us fucking shotguns.

And Matt could've just died from the stupid, stupid bliss of--everything.

There was no midnight retribution for disobeying L, and Matt was well aware he owed both Yagami's for that.

No.

Penance was served in other ways.

It started, and ended, with Near, and a briefcase.

* * *

**A/N:** Wah. I'm so so so sorry for how late this is T.T I intended to get it just before my beta whisked herself away but the universe conspires against me. So here it is. And disastrously short. Arghhhh...

The "comfortable silences" line is from Pulp Fiction, as is "they should've given us fucking shotguns."

Polysyndeton ftw.

& again I'm sorry for the delay. Replying to all my wonderful, gorgeous reviews right now. Moar?

x0x0 Raven


	9. Facile Princeps

**CHAPTER EIGHT: Facile Princeps, Or, What the Old Folks Say**

If Matt really gave a shit about precision timing outside of his job then it _really_ started a month and twenty days before the Halloween hit, on a sweltering night in September, the windows angrily thrown open. The record player was blasting rock, rhythm, and jazz to try and keep the heat at bay, somehow. Matt was tracing the path of recollections on Mello's scarred shoulder, mind wandering aimlessly over past jobs and video game stratagems, equally inattentive to both. Mello was glassy-eyed, stoned not quite against his will, twitching from caffeine headaches, mumbling incoherent French poetry and counting the ugly blossoms on the faded wallpaper they mutually hated and couldn't bear to replace.

Yeah, it was one of those nights.

"He said once."

They both knew who he meant.

Matt lipped at a bit of ridged flesh, tongued the valley in between, let it go. Honey, heat, sweat, and sweet.

"—hated it. Kinda funny, right?"

Only if you were them, born into the family where no one was related, born suckling blood and lead instead of milk.

Matt never did fully digest the words, just tried, dazedly, to uncouple the sardonic, upside-down crosses woven into Mello's skin with his tongue.

_What_ gave way to _yes_ gave way to slow, heathen catechism, _'Matt'_s and the husky, wordless tones of a predator, guileless with instinct and heat.

One month and twenty days later, retribution, if you could call it that.

Halloween, and L sent his prize fighters into the ring to take care of a little familial sect that had slipped, or attempted to slip, from his power. They had stolen something, Matt guessed. L could be miserly, within reason. Just yet another degree of control. Mello and Near knew _what_, exactly, although they didn't know what _exactly_. In any case, Near "wasn't at liberty to say" and Mello, for once, actually agreed with him. Traitor.

L forced them to work together: Mello and Matt gun slinging, bang bang bangs and body falls, Hal and Near conducting the eerie chorus of singing blades, slice slice, a scream. They scurried away into dank decay like rats before the halogen glow of choji-oiled steel, gunmetal black and white. And they cried 'atonement' and they cried 'reckoning' like true vigilantes of justice.

Matt loved the smell of bullshit in the morning.

They gave chase on twin bikes, corralling the damned down the maze of alleys lined with parading masked children. Mello had black makeup stitches over his mouth and milked them for all their worth. "Did you really think you could get away with it?"

Overkill, but it made Mello happy.

And they kneeled at his feet without hesitation, trembling kisses of death, the two halves of brain were split, execution style, again and again and again. Matt caught fire with him, resting his black .44 between one's eyes.

(Mello sulked at this one, all out of place with the others, ruining the whole row. Matt was doubled over, laughing, because she fell funny!)

Matt drove them home in the car L provided after they disposed of their bikes according to 'protocol', and Mello drove him absolutely crazy, could he _please_ stop it?

"Mello, wait, Mello, stop, Mello I-have-to-drive-there-are-kids-on-the-streets—"

Ignored.

"What about what they stole?" he gasped out. "D-didn't you have to retrieve it?"

A snort.

"Near got it."

Bitter as cyanide. Matt ran through a red light, horn blaring for all its worth.

"I saw him with it."

A pause. Mello breathing like torn stockings; Matt wondered why.

"Better off with him anyway. I'd probably lose the thing."

A lie. Matt answered his own question. Mello continued doing things he really shouldn't be doing, not while Matt was _driving_, at any rate.

"What was it anyway?"

Matt was past the point of truly caring. He spat out the window to rid his mouth of the crappy taste of Halloween makeup.

"Nothing special. A briefcase."

Matt just barely avoided sideswiping a scarecrow, and hissed.

"What--?"

"Locked, duh."

Matt ceased his questions. Mello ceased his answers. They drove on, silent, because neither of them needed words where they were going.

Hours later, November the first, and it was all misty, watercolor aquamarine and saffron under screens of gray silk, only despised and unprepossessing because it was after candy and ecstatic self-inducement, adrenaline and high-fructose corn syrup.

Matt only woke up when he heard Mello raise his voice.

"What do you mean, 'Where is it?' _He's_ got it!"

Twenty-six minutes later, and they were in deep shit.

_Oh heck, it's up to my neck._

L was a serpent paper cutout with thunderheads behind his slitted eyes; even Light recoiled, sour as a forsaken housewife. Matt dug sleep from his eyes and yawned until Mello said,

"He hated it, you know. He really did."

And it hit L immediately, and then Matt a little after, and Light belatedly, but that was only because he didn't know Near, Near with an action figure adorning the hilt of his katana, a charm on the collar of a ruthless slaughterhouse dog.

He had Matt go and tell Rester to sound the proper alarms, send out scouts and spies and trackers like an overseer calling for his bloodhounds.

Mello bristled by the time Matt was three steps from the doorway, and by the time he had one foot on the threshold Mello was out of his chair, and when he was halfway down the hall he heard a faint crash and Matt hoped Watari had the decency to use rubber bullets, and hoped even more fervently L wouldn't be incensed by Mello's accusations.

Of course, once Matt entered Rester's office, hastily abandoned, stripped down to the light fixtures, bare but for the one note ("Sorry, but he's right.") taped to the desk, all he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears.

* * *

**A/N: **It's back! My, my, my. Sorry doesn't even begin. I meant to get this up a month ago. A MONTH. Anyway, I came back from one vacation to put this up and then next week I have another vacation until the 18th. It was just calling my name.

--MAJOR PROPS to my incomparable beta hyperdragonfyre. She beta'd this the day after she got in a car accident and has been hoofing it without pain meds despite her poor back injuries. Yes, she is very hardcore. Much love to her!--

Much love also to my readers and reviewers. Please keep it up! We're in the homestretch!

**Disclaimers: **Credit is due to Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" as well as Shel Silverstein's "Boa Constrictor", The Statler Brothers' "Flowers On The Wall", and of course Ohba, Obata, and Tarantino.

x0x0 Raven


	10. Rogue

**CHAPTER NINE: Rogue**

_Near's gone rogue._

A wildfire, deafening in its silent roar, a black flame firestorm of quiet chaos.

_Already started killing others…_

An oil spill, eternal black viscosity, leaving behind charred, lacerated corpses like the flapping, blackened scales of fish.

_Already lost Misa—_

Blonde pigtails and black lace cut to rivulets, slim body a perfect corkscrew.

_and Sayu—_

Pretty little feline face shredded methodically into quadrilles, unrecognizable.

…_when will it end?_

And none of the family ever said so aloud, but…

W_hat if it doesn't?_

No one had ever opposed L and won. There were reasons for that. Many, _many_ reasons.

And everyone said 'coup' and everyone said 'revolt' and at night Matt pulled at his own hair, saying "sick bastard", what the hell was he trying to prove (Sayu sliced up like a chessboard, too exact for martyrdom).

But Mello stayed silent.

Except to Matt, of course. He told him to shut up and pay attention to the movie, Maynard and Zeb were up.

Most of the time "what do you think" just resulted in a shrug.

But mid-November, the sky was white and Matt was playing imaginary Tetris with the kitchen tiles and Mello was staring at his hands, and he said,

"He told me he wanted out."

It was the _way_ he said it, like an echo of a dream.

"Even asked me to help."

Matt didn't know what was scarier: Mello's answer or the fact that he _knew_ Mello's answer.

"Didn't know me at all."

He clenched his hands into fists. White-knuckled. Matt licked his lips and pried them open. His fingernails had indented four pink smirks into his palm.

"Mel."

He dropped the second syllable on days like this.

"We're next."

For a second, Mello's eyes were those of a hanged man, resigned to an edge of Near's blade. Just a little bit. Not fully. Never fully.

Matt watched the change, the crackle of aura around him like phantasmagoria. Radiation. Energy. The rosary beads red, red, and that shining white cross. (Mello had filed the Savior off long ago. Desecration, yes, but he grinned whenever he told Matt he'd burn for much worse.)

Matt had never seen anything more captivating. He wouldn't want to.

"We'll be ready."

This time the fists stayed clenched.

* * *

**A/N: **Yet another cliffhanger! Please don't kill me.

I meant to get this up before I left, but in all honesty I simply...forgot. O.o

Now that I'm back though, this is my focus. For now. Cough.

Ah, my darling readers and reviewers. -humbly beseeches you all to continue-

x0x0 Raven


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